I HAVE A BIG TEN AND SEC HEADACHE IN THE (SOMETHING) FOOTBALL PLAYOFF
Nick Saban says it’s no longer a college experience — and why would it be with two mega-commissioners trying to gather billions and carve as many automatic bids as possible in a 14-program postseason?
They play games on campuses with stadiums. But if football is the contest, this continues to be laughably collegiate. Players are regarded as poo leavings and will see little of the $1.3 billion a year arriving from ESPN, relying on random NIL cash payouts and transferring via portals. How stunning to hear Nick Saban, retired from coaching and never from harsh pontificating, relying on the same moneymaker to deliver a new message about … the moneymaker.
“What we have now is not college football — not college football as we know it. You hear somebody use the word ‘student-athlete.’ That doesn’t exist,” he told ESPN when it wasn’t exclusively entering a $7.8 billion contract to televise the (Something) Football Playoff for six years through 2031-32.
How about calling it the NFL kindergarten? Pre-Tay? Or the simplest way to fund buildings and give raises to university administrators? As we speak, playoff officials are using calculators and determining how to extend a perfect 12-team system into a needless sponge bath of 14, splashing as many billions as possible into the Big Ten and Southeastern Conferences. Don’t be surprised if each megaconference wins four automatic bids, which means about 60 percent of the mandate goes to an annual fray of — let me guess — Georgia, Alabama, Texas and LSU along with Michigan, Ohio State, Washington and Oregon. The leagues with a combined 34 teams are plotting domination in December and January, with rarities from the Big 12 and Atlantic Coast, while Notre Dame waves and Deion Sanders raises hell.
“There’s work still to be done,” CFP executive director Bill Hancock said.
What, how to enlarge the two-league bids to 10?
As it is, the SEC and Big Ten have such a commanding influence on the sport that we wonder why they’ve invited others. Don’t think that hasn’t been pondered, as well. The Big Ten commissioner, Tony Petitti, already is making sure a team that has lost multiple times remains in his playoff hunt. “We want fans to think that, you know, a game in the second week of November, even if you've already lost two or three games, still has a lot of value,” Petitti told, well, ESPN. “That's the goal.” So taking care of Wisconsin means more than Florida State — I know, a bad joke.
We’re trying to make a much-desired playoff as enjoyable as possible, which is impossible for men attempting to Bigfoot their way into finances and access. Does anyone honestly think Petitti or SEC commissioner Greg Sankey are doing anything but powering their way through Texas meetings? With 14 teams, beginning in 2026, two teams would gain important first-round byes — and how would that process work within the selection committee? Always the SEC and the Big Ten?
It contributed to bigger thoughts. With no offense to Hancock, who always did a nice job dispensing track-and-field media credentials at the Olympics, maybe Saban might want to do more than helping — ready? — ESPN as a commentator. Is it time to appoint him as commissioner of this large mess?
“I’m not really looking for a job, but I do know I'd like to impact college football the best way I can, whether it's being a spokesperson or anything else,” Saban said. “Listen, I'm for the players. It's not that I'm not for the players. I want to see the players have a great quality of life and be able to create value for themselves.
“But we've gone to nobody talking about education, nobody talking about creating value for their future, to talking only about how much money can I make while I'm in college. I think the consequence of this could come down the road when some of these guys get 28 and 29 years old that maybe they didn't prepare themselves for when they can't play football, which is what you should do when you go to college.”
And the fans? “Just like an NFL player has a contract or a coach has a contract, something in place so you don't have all this raiding of rosters and mass movement,” Saban said. “I wonder what fans are going to say when they don't even know the team from year to year because there's no development of teams, just bringing in new players every year.”
Oh, we’re already there. Speaking of NIL and clumsier, problematic collectives, Saban said, “What you have now isn't name, image and likeness. A collective has nothing to do with name, image and likeness.” He was barely gone from Alabama for a month when the university sliced its longtime football voice, Eli Gold, only a year after he was diagnosed with cancer. “Well, the university has chosen not to bring me back,” said Gold, who worked in 2023. “This is not, with a capital N-O-T, not at all health-related. I am very healthy. Everything is wonderful. I am healthy as a horse.” Are the Crimson Tide already headed to a crash?
I’d make him the commissioner right now. But the epicenter doesn’t have room for any authority figure, much less Saban. The billions — 7.8 of them — always win.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.